Episode #911

Murakami, Big Eyes, Stars

Friday, March 14, 2008

Kismet with Cynthia Breazeal, postdoctoral fellow at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab working in the Humanoid Robotics Group. Anne Foerst worked with Breazeal on designing the robot."
(Donna Coveney)

Studio 360 considers the strange force of cuteness, and our biological urge to say, “awww!” or sometimes “ugggh” when we encounter the cute. And in Japan, anxieties about the atomic bomb may be masked in cuteness. Plus, a live set of smart indie pop from the band “Stars.”

“
I enjoy Disney. I have to admit - my friends find this appalling.

— Gary Cross

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Big eyes are appealing on anything -- babies, cartoon characters, Jake Gyllenhaal. But our fondness for big eyes is the work of nature, not Disney. Studio 360’s Eric Molinsky found out how evolutionary psychology muscled its way into pop culture.